Drinking water is commonly packaged and sold in large glass or plastic bottles having volume capacities of about 5 gallons. The containers are very bulky and heavy, weighing about 50 pounds each.
Drinking water is also sold commercially in smaller-sized bottles (e.g., 1/2 and 1 liter bottles) which are packaged in multiple units in a cardboard box or carton for delivery to a retailer, or to the consumer at the home or office. Such cartons also are bulky and heavy and it is not unusual for a retailer or business to purchase drinking water in both the large 5 gallon containers for general consumption and in the smaller containers for individual consumption.
Because of their bulky size and weight, personnel who deliver these products find it convenient to use a hand truck when transporting these products from the delivery truck to the consumer's home or place of business. To be efficient, it is desirable to transport as many bottles or cartons of bottles in each trip from the truck to the home or business as can safely be managed. With a conventional two-wheeled hand truck of the type having a single load-supporting nose piece projecting forwardly from the bottom of the frame, only one 5-gallon sized bottle should be handled at a time and loaded in an upright, stable position on the nosepiece of the truck. One or more cartons of the smaller-sized bottled water products may be transported by the truck if the cartons are stacked upon one another.
An existing prior art U.S. patent discloses a hand truck adapted exclusively for use in handling one or more of the large 5-gallon type bottled water containers. Fixed support appendages project forwardly from the side rails of the truck in spaced apart relation for engaging and supporting the water bottles between them on their sides in fore to aft lengthwise orientation with respect to the truck. Recognizing that such a load is inherently unstable by placing too much of the weight forwardly of the wheels, the patent discloses rearwardly curving side rails to shift the upper bottles rearwardly and thereby distribute the load more evenly over the wheels. The fixed nature of the support arms and rearward curvature of the side rails is objectionable in the present inventor's view because it increases the overall front-to-back dimension of the hand truck making it bulkier and more difficult to store than a conventional straight-railed hand truck. Furthermore, the prior art hand truck is dedicated exclusively to the handling of 5-gallon bottled water containers and is not designed to handle other products as well, such as cartons of the smaller-size bottled water products.
A hand truck constructed in accordance with the present invention overcomes the foregoing objections.